Besides offering a social networking tool within the Google Apps domain, …

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Google has finally clicked +1 for its business users and plugged them into the Google+ social networking service, in hopes of turning it into a business collaboration tool. Today, Google product manager Ronald Ho announced on the Google Enterprise blog that organizations using Google Apps can turn on Google+ within the suite. Google will be rolling out the capability over the next few days.

Users of Google Apps accounts will have the added functionality of automatically being able to limit their sharing to people within their organization.“For customers who use Google Apps for Business or the free version of Google Apps and who have chosen to automatically enable new services, Google+ will automatically become available to all of your users,” Ho wrote.

The integration of Google+ with Google Apps means that companies can now integrate features like Google+’s video “Hangouts with extras” into shared documents, allowing people within the organization to video conference while editing a proposal, spreadsheet, or presentation. Google already supported basic video conferencing and chat through Gmail in Google Apps, but the new additions provide a much more integrated collaboration experience.

Google Apps users have been complaining about the lack of integration for Google+ for some time, and Ho recognized that in the announcement. “It took more technical work than we expected to bring Google+ to Google Apps, and we thank you for your patience,” he wrote. Additional integration between Google+ and Google Apps is planned, he added.

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Sean Gallagher
Sean is Ars Technica's IT and National Security Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland. Emailsean.gallagher@arstechnica.com//Twitter@thepacketrat